Value For Expenditure
"There's a sense that we are turning the corner, but unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of (the) decision about the way we fought and funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come."
"We may be mentally turning the page, but we are certainly not from a budgetary and financial perspective."
Linda J. Bilmes, Harvard University working paper
Those two wars, arriving hard on the blistering heels of the 9/11 atrocities in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, have cost the United States dearly. Not they alone, needless to say, since Washington called in its IOUs from its international partners appalled at the audacity and butchery of that attack on American soil. But fundamentally, it is the U.S. that has picked up the lion's share of the battle.
The battle, after all, waged by radical Islamists engaged in Islamic jihad against the infidels. All infidels, but the United States of America as the world's most powerful nation, represents the pinnacle of debased Islamic-values-and-principles-denials of all Western societies; it is the democratic guide of all others, their mentor and protector. When it is destroyed the rest will follow.
The steady infiltration of Muslim immigrants into Europe have managed to undermine through less violent means the traditions and values and heritage of Western culture. This has been a multiple-pronged attack; what occurred with the attacks on 9/11 simply the violent end of the stick that conquest-heritaged Islam wields; the other is a willow-branch that castigates the reluctance of Westerners to leave their sinful ways behind and surrender.
Americans are now bearing the financial costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a cost reputed to be reaching toward $6-trillion, paid for through borrowed money on war loans. Every American household is burdened to the tune of $75,000 on that debt. "There will be no peace dividend" concludes the 22-page report from the Kennedy School of Government, "and the legacy of (the) Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades."
The long-term cost of treating veterans who seek treatment for war-related afflictions from amputations to post-traumatic stress disorders have not yet been adequately figured into the equation. Setting aside the enormous cost in anguish, pain and misery left to the families of those American military personnel who did not return alive.
"More than half of the 1.56 million troops who have been discharged to date have received medical treatment ... and been granted benefits for the rest of their lives"... pointed out the report. The full costs will not be known for decades into the future. $2-trillion was added to the U.S. national debt representing 20% of total debt, through borrowing for that war effort.
Former President George W. Bush's chief economic adviser in 2002, Lawrence Lindsey, had estimated that the "upperbound" costs of war in Iraq would come out to around $200-billion. Like all seemingly casual estimates of sacrifice, treasury, timelines, endurance and casualties relating to the Iraq war, let alone the ongoing cooperation in funding Afghan infrastructure and training its troops beyond 2014, the numbers were vastly understated.
Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Controversy, Finance, Iraq, Islamism, Terrorism, United States
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 31, 2013
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